valixt > valixt's Quotes

“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
― Lord George Gordon Byron

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
― Zhuangzi, Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
― William James

“All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.”
― Kobayashi Issa

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
― William James

“How much does he lack himself who must have many things?”
― Sen no Rikyū

“Things have their roots and branches. Affairs have their beginnings and their ends. To know what is first and what is last will lead one near the Way.”
― Confucius, The Great Learning

“With melted snow I boil fragrant tea.”
― Mencius, Mencius

“The worst mockery God can make of a moralist is that He compels him to be a
solipsist.”
― Kedar Joshi

“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Coarse rice to eat, water to drink, my bended arm for a pillow - therein is happiness. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means are nothing but drifting clouds.”
― Confucius, The Analects

“The ancients said that for persons who cultivated body and mind, and who are virtuous and honorable, death is an experience of liberation, a long-awaited rest from a lifetime of labors. Death helps the unscrupulous person to put an end to the misery of desire. Death, then, for everyone is a kind of homecoming. That is why the ancient sages speak of a dying person as a person who is 'going home.”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

“Inside Jade Hall is a curtain of pearls
behind it lives a graceful girl
her beauty transcends the immortals
her skin is like that of a peach
spring mists rise in the east
autumn winds stir in the west
thirty years from now
she’ll look like chewed sugarcane”
― Cold Mountain, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

“A person with a mind is bound to be filled with conceptions. These conceptions prevent him from knowing things directly, so a person with a mind shall never really know.”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“When two things occur successively we call them cause and effect if we believe one event made the other one happen. If we think one event is the response to the other, we call it a reaction. If we feel that the two incidents are not related, we call it a mere coincidence. If we think someone deserved what happened, we call it retribution or reward, depending on whether the event was negative or positive for the recipient. If we cannot find a reason for the two events' occurring simultaneously or in close proximity, we call it an accident. Therefore, how we explain coincidences depends on how we see the world. Is everything connected, so that events create resonances like ripples across a net? Or do things merely co-occur and we give meaning to these co-occurrences based on our belief system? Lieh-tzu's answer: It's all in how you think.”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Benedictus de Spinoza

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Spinoza

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Chanting is no more holy than listening to the murmur of a stream, couting prayer beads no more scared than simply breathing, religious robed no more spiritual than work clothes.”
― lao tsu

“Travel is such a wonderful experience! Especially when you forget you are traveling. Then you will enjoy whatever you see and do. Those who look into themselves when they travel will not think about what they see. In fact, there is no distinction between the viewer and the seen. You experience everything with the totality of yourself, so that every blade of grass, every mountain, every lake is alive and is a part of you. When there is no division between you and what is other, this is the ultimate experience of traveling.”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.”
― Freddie Mercury

“Who wants to live forever? ”
― Freddie Mercury

“in the pursuit of knowledge:
everyday something is added.
in the pursuit of enlightenment:
everyday something is dropped.”
― Lao Tzu

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.”
― Rumi

“I always knew I was a star, and now the rest of the world seems to agree with me.”
― Freddie Mercury

“When the hunter sets traps only for rabbits, tigers and dragons are left uncaught.”
― Li Po

“We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”
― Li Po

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays